Coptic and Ethiopian Wedding Dates: The Fasting Calendar.
Of all the traditions here, these two leave the fewest days open — the Coptic church fasts something like two hundred days a year, and matrimony is the one sacrament that cannot be celebrated during a fast.
The calendar
Both calendars share a structure: twelve months of thirty days plus five or six epagomenal days, with a leap year every four years and no century exception. The Coptic epoch is 284 AD, the Ethiopian 8 AD, which is why Ethiopian years run seven or eight behind. Easter follows the Julian reckoning in both.
The rules
- The Great Fast
- Fifty-five days before Easter in the Coptic reckoning; Abiy Tsom in the Ethiopian.
- The Nativity Fast
- Forty-three days Coptic; Tsome Nebiyat from Hidar 15 to Tahsas 28 in Ethiopia, ending at Christmas on 7 January.
- The Apostles' Fast
- Begins after Pentecost and varies in length with the date of Easter.
- The Fast of the Virgin
- Fifteen or sixteen days in August — Tsome Filseta in Ethiopia.
- The Fast of Nineveh
- Three days, three weeks before the Great Fast. Kept by the Coptic, Ethiopian and Syriac churches alike.
What can be worked out, and what cannot
A calendar can determine
- Both calendar conversions, exactly
- Easter by the Julian reckoning, which both follow
- Every fixed fast, and the variable ones anchored to Easter
Only your priest can decide
The Coptic rule also excludes "times just before fasting begins", which is not a defined interval. And while Ethiopian practice clearly avoids fasting days, we could not find that stated as canon in an official English source, so confirm rather than assume.
A common claim, corrected
The Ethiopian calendar is just the Gregorian calendar minus seven years.
The offset is seven or eight years depending on the time of year, because the Ethiopian new year falls on 11 September, or 12 September in the year before a Gregorian leap year. Month lengths differ too, so date conversion has to go through Julian Day Numbers rather than simple arithmetic. A widely-cited source even mistranslates the Ethiopian Apostles' Fast end date by a fortnight.
The Ethiopian and Eritrean diaspora — concentrated in Washington DC, Minneapolis, Seattle, Toronto, Israel and the Gulf — is unusually calendar-literate, and already uses date converters daily.